I
am writing (or more accurately, attempting to write) from a rented house. My family is together for Thanksgiving. Not just we four Leggs, but my side of the
family—my sister’s family, my brother’s family and our parents. There are eight adults and eight boys ranging
in age from 15 to 4. In one house. For five days.

Matchbox
cars are flying down the banisters. An
electronic “Pew! Pew!” emanates from the video game system upstairs. A few Ziploc bags of ice rest on the counter,
their patients miraculously healed once a new game of “Wrestling” is announced. Adults laugh, kids giggle and the occasional,
“Knock it off!” escapes our lips.

It
is LOUD. It is CHAOTIC. It is AWESOME.

This
is the only time of year my family gets to be together. The in-laws, the out-laws, the biologically-similar
and the additions to the gene pool come together, amalgamating into an organism
that lives and breathes and nurtures and annoys and reconnects.

What
I am experiencing in micro, the world lives in macro. Differing styles of government, economies,
ethnic qualities, and belief systems attempt to mesh into a place we can all peacefully
coexist.

And
yet, in reality, the governments and economies and differing qualities are not
the problem as much as the people behind them.
For a species that shares 99.9% of our DNA, we sure have an awful time
even simply getting along, much less relating and connecting and bonding and loving.

We
need some crazy God-love to make it work.

You
know what I’m talking about. Love that covers
a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8), affects our enemies (Matt 5:44), binds us
all together in perfect harmony (Colossians 3:14), that dies to itself on a
cross so that we can be one (John 17:21).